


keep you close

by MistressKat



Category: Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 22:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13258392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/pseuds/MistressKat
Summary: He starts sleeping under her bed when they start affording to stay in places with actual beds.





	keep you close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alyse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyse/gifts).



> Written as a fandom_stocking gift for alyse. I hope this hits your fic likes for quiet moments and hiding things under the surface...

He starts sleeping under her bed when they start affording to stay in places with actual beds.  
  
"It's a waste of a perfectly good mattress," Gretel says, hands on her hips as she watches her brother shake out his bedroll onto the floor. She's exasperated and amused in equal measure, all overlaid with the ever-present fondness.  
  
"Sure is," Hansel says, stretching out, hands behind his head like he doesn't have a care in the world.  
  
She kicks him in the ribs on her way to bed, none too gently. It's the easy, safe kind of affection they show. The kind that masks as much as it reveals.  
  
Gretel thinks about just asking for a room with a single bed sometimes, but their reputation travels further than they do. Everybody knows they are siblings. Everybody knows that it's only right that a brother sleeps in the same room as his unmarried sister (no matter how many witches she kills, no matter how many noses she breaks, some things won't change) but to sleep in the same bed...  
  
Besides, even if there was only one of them, she thinks Hansel would still sleep under the bed rather than in it.  
  
"Why?" She asks it only once.  
  
They are in another small town, dirty and poor and without witches. The inn is old, the mattress sagging under her, straw prickling at her through the worn cover.  
  
"Why sleep here?" Gretel lets her hand fall over the edge of the bed, reaching under it, fingertips brushing over fabric grown soft from the years against her brother's skin.  
  
He shifts, muscles bunching under her palm, curve of the ribcage changing to the broadness of his back. She feels him breathe; in, out, in.    
  
"Keeps me safe," he says on the exhale and something about it splinters like tree bark from a crossbow bolt.  
  
It hits her like that too, the shards of it burying deep and true. She doesn't need to ask what Hansel means, what he's trying to keep safe from.  
  
_‘This is where I let go’_ , Gretel thinks. _‘This is where I keep us safe.’_  
  
Instead, she fists her hand into his brother's shirt, tight, as tight as his fingers, reaching out to circle her wrist. Instead, she thinks: _‘this is where I keep us.’_ Not safe. But together.  
  



End file.
